


empty air into hollow veins

by sinkingsidewalks



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: 5x22 Spoilers, 5x22 Tag, Angst, F/M, Finale spoilers, I'm Sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-19
Updated: 2018-05-19
Packaged: 2019-05-08 23:31:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14704752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinkingsidewalks/pseuds/sinkingsidewalks
Summary: "She can’t speak. She watches Mack and she can’t speak."A continuation ofthatscene.





	empty air into hollow veins

**Author's Note:**

> So I watched the episode then cried then wrote this. It's kinda short and sorry if it sucks, I wrote it in a couple of hours. What a way to spend my Saturday morning!  
> This is a work of complete fiction.

She can’t speak. She watches Mack and she can’t speak. 

Everything else slithers away. Her heart races under her skin, blood tearing through her veins and running free until there’s none left in her. Until her heart pumps hollow, valves opening, closing, around nothing. A lock without the flow of a canal.

The fear is overwhelming. 

Fitz.

No.

NO.

No, it can’t be.

Why else would he…

Air rasps at her lungs. It drags through her throat, burning like ammonia, down her windpipe then disappears from the clutches of her lungs. It feels deoxygenated. It whistles uselessly through the cavern of her body and there’s no exchange. Empty air into hollow veins. 

She would have known. She would know. After everything. 

All that they’d been through. Every struggle. Every improbable victory. 

Her life is tied to his. She doesn’t care how unscientific it is. 

They were born under good stars. That’s what his mum had said, years ago, when they were still at Sci-Ops and she’d gone with him to visit one Christmas. Stars that were constant. Stars that would keep them warm even from light years away and always, _always_ guide them home. 

She touches her thumb to the bottom of her wedding band. Not after everything.

He couldn’t die. 

They’d broken the loop. Anything is possible.

He still couldn’t die. 

“Jemma,” Mack says. His voice weighted down, buried under the rubble of emotion. Twisted up like molten metal melted down and poured into the casing for something new. Except there’s nothing new. 

No.

“Jemma, I’m so sorry.”

“No,” she barely whispers, or does she say it aloud?

“I’m so sorry.”

No.

There were a million other things. There was timelines and multiverses and gravitonium. There were singularities. Sacrifices and loss. Compromises. Promises. Design and implementation. 

There was a forest under the lighthouse with a shining mid-morning sun. A perfect vintage gown, the metal of a ring warmed by his hands slipped onto her finger, and _forever._

There was a baby girl she’d get to lay in his arms and watch heal him in a way nothing else ever could. She’d stitch back together the places where his father had ripped into him once, then again, then the ones he’d torn himself. And maybe he could finally be whole. 

There was a gun, tucked under their nightstand, with nine perfect shots of dendrotoxin. 

It couldn’t be so simple.

Death is too simple for a story like theirs. 

“He’s gone.”

Her knees hit the corrugated steel of the med room floor but she doesn’t remember falling. It would probably hurt if her whole body wasn’t on fire. And cold. Like dry ice. Or hypothermia. The cold that burns.

Mack says something more but she can’t hear it.

Is she crying? She should be crying. Should she be crying?

He can’t be gone. She could always save him. That was what they did. 

Mack kneels at her side. He pulls her into the warm expanse of his chest and she feels so small she can’t feel anything at all. 

Fitz never made her feel small. He always made her feel like her skin was just the right shape, like her body and mind were perfectly matched. Even when she was sixteen and could never say what people wanted or feel what they said she should. 

Fitz had always _understood_ , before she’d ever had to explain. He knew, intrinsically, how her brain worked, and she his. It was what linked them, latched them together and kept her always reaching for more. 

It was that pull in her gut that whispered _closer, closer, closer_ no matter how near she got. The part of her that always wanted more of him. The part that mirrored the shape of his thoughts against her own, finished his sentences before he knew their ending, sought out all his feelings and opinions no matter how insignificant. 

It was the part of her that was quietly thrilled the first time he’d sunk into her, his hands on her waist, mouth open against her throat and she’d noticed his breathing match up with the rhythm of hers. Because if she could keep him _this_ close, she’d never have to feel alone again. 

But now he’s gone. And there are so many things she doesn’t know how to live without. Years and years of built up memories flood through her. Isn’t your life supposed to flash before your eyes when _you_ die? Maybe she was dying. It wouldn’t be unwelcome. 

Every piece of her life was tied into his. There were so many nights spent studying or in the lab, sore eyes from too dim lamps, and the bubble of quiet concentration around them. Days where the only comfort she could find was his arm around her shoulders as tears stream down her neck. The feeling of his heart beating in tandem with hers. That’s gone now.

“I’m so sorry, Jemma.” Mack whispers and it makes no difference. 

Her body returns to her in a rush. The pain no dimmer than it was the moment before. She wonders if it will ever wane and decides that’s probably impossible. He’s always been half of her and phantom limbs never fade.

It isn’t fair. They’ve made it so far and they still have so far to go. They’ve been cut off, mid chapter, no resolution, and she wasn’t even there. 

He’s hers. He was _hers._

He shouldn’t have had to die alone.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know what popular opinion of the episode is, I haven't gone online yet, but I think I loved it. It was certainly beautiful. I've got some ideas about a future!fic that I might write but I had to write this mostly because Elizabeth would have killed this scene if they'd shot something like it. Let me know what you think (about this? about the episode?) in comments or I'm around on tumblr at sinkingsidewalks and I always love to chat!


End file.
